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I haven’t posted about it in a long time, but transmog is one of my very favorite things in the game and one of my largest time-sinks. If I’m not doing current content, I’m probably running old dungeons and raids to collect armor appearances, pets, and mounts. A few months ago after the appearance collection tab was introduced, my husband and I ran every single dungeon and raid in the game up through Warlords heroic dungeons, amassing as many armor and weapon appearances as we could.

I have an enormous amount of transmog material to play with, especially under the leather armor category. So today I’m going to showcase a simple set I threw together for my druid, Sylvestris. It’s Nightmare themed and easy enough to collect for druids at level 110 who want something non-leafy, non-green to run around in. Especially if you want to roleplay as a Nightmare-infested druid!

This is the Haunted Forest set from normal mode 10 and 25-man Throne of Thunder. The set drops as tier tokens for druids, but look-alike pieces also drop for other classes. The staff is a PvP staff from the Warlords expansion, and was the closest thing I could find to compliment the set.

Overall, the set is not difficult to collect. It is gated behind weekly raid lockouts and your own ability to solo a raid from two expansions ago. The staff, if you didn’t collect it during Warlords, might take a little bit of effort to earn now that PvP currency isn’t straight honor/conquest points, but there are other staves to substitute that fit the black and red theme. Staff of Natural Fury comes to mind as a good alternative, as it is simple, druidy, and black. I added a cosmetic weapon enchant to the staff to make it glow extra red and drippy, to give the effect of the evil, Nightmare corrupted trees.

Get The Look:

For Druids:
Tier tokens for the set drop in 10 man normal and 25 man normal Throne of Thunder.
Chest – Dark Animus
Gauntlets – Council of Elders
Helm – Twin Consorts
Legs – Ji-Kun (you do not technically need to collect the legs if you are going to wear the chest piece, as it covers them entirely.)
Shoulders – Iron Qon

Apart from the tier tokens, several additional pieces drop in the raid that will complete your look:
Girdle of Night and Day (belt) – Twin Consorts (Sylv is not wearing this as part of his set, as I have not yet seen it drop. I chose to hide the belt instead.)Deeproot Treads (feet) – These are a zone drop from the raid. Good luck. If you don’t have them or don’t want to farm them, there are many alternatives, as only the bottom portion of the boot will show under the robes. Sylv’s boots are transmogged to Black Featherlight Boots, which are appropriately red and black.

These pieces are not druid-specific and can be used to create the transmog look for any other leather wearing class. They can also be used to fill in the gaps for any druid who is having difficulty collecting the tier tokens.

Overall, I went for a Nightmare druid theme with lots of red, black, and purple natural elements to it to create a look that screamed corrupted nature.

Soloing Throne of Thunder:

By and large, 10 man normal Throne of Thunder is an easy endeavor. As a level 110 Feral druid, I ripped it apart in half an hour. For the more experienced soloist, raising the difficulty to 25 man normal will yield more loot, and therefore higher probability of the drops you want. Otherwise you might want to take a trusted friend, however, because it can get dicey, especially if you aren’t well geared or well-versed on the boss fights.

Dark Animus
On 10 man, Dark Animus posed no threat at all to my druid. He was dead in about 10 seconds, and my health was at 100%. On 25, it’s a different story, and I recommend bringing a friend to make it much easier. The issue is in the adds that activate at the beginning of the fight: they do massive amounts of damage, and my druid died in seconds. When I brought my husband along on his monk, it took us several tries to figure it out. Our winning strategy was Sylv in Guardian spec and his monk in Windwalker spec. Start the fight, stack on the boss before he activates, blow all your cooldowns, and DPS the shit out of the adds until the boss wakes up, then burn him down. As a druid in bear form, I was able to survive the damage, and my husband could kill the boss. If you’re going solo on 25 man, try it as a bear.

Iron Qon:
Do not kill him until he mounts all three of his quilen. My husband and I learned this the hard way. If you kill him before you kill all three quilen, he bugs out, and you cannot loot him.

Lei-Shen
This fight is not hard to solo, but it can be hectic. Stay close to the center of the platform so you don’t get knocked off the edge. When he summons his adds, spam AoE and wait for him to rejoin the fight. Instant heals, potions, knockbacks and damage reducing cooldowns will get you through the metric fuckton of adds he summons if you’re having trouble.

It’s a beautiful new world out there, guys. I managed to get some play time last night after I got home, between my doctor’s appointment and the DDoS crap that happened later in the evening. I am absolutely floored by how gorgeous Val’Sharah is, and it was the perfect choice to begin my adventure as a druid. I took a smattering of screenshots as Sylv traipsed around smelling the flowers, so this post will be a photographic journey through the druid artifact quest (for the Feral daggers) and into Val’Sharah. I do not believe any of the screenshots offer spoilers, but the captions might.

The moment I set foot in Dalaran, I was asked by Archdruid Hamuul Runetotem to pretty please fly my ass over to Moonglade because reasons. Like, I know demons are attacking and the world is being threatened and all but, druid things are more important. So I went to Moonglade, gathered my posse, and pounced whiskers first into the Emerald Dream.

It. Was. STUNNING.

Okay but seriously look at the flowers. There are a ton of varieties and they’re all so freaking detailed and pretty and they move when I walk through them and I spent like 10 minutes just running around eyeballing the flowers and loudly exclaiming to an empty room how awesome the art team was and you can tell I’m excited because of the run on sentence! FLOWERS!

LOOK AT THEM.

I finally focused long enough to kill the Big Bad and make it to my class hall, which I think is in Val’Sharah? I’m not sure. I was too distracted by flowers to pay that close of attention.

The druid class hall is really just a big open space full of flowers and nature and dryads and all things green and druidy.

Sylv stops to sniff the milkweed.

I spent too much time trying to climb up those huge roots to see what was up there. I don’t think anything is.

So green!

There are a lot of little houses in the druid class hall and if you go inside you can see druids hard at work. Doing something. Druids are book nerds, apparently.

Shiiiny.

This one looked to be where druids go to sleep and enter the Dream. It had some comfy looking beds off to one side. I would definitely stay a night or two here.

This proud papa moonkin is teaching his little fluff ball chicks how to dance. It’s so cute I might die.

After exploring the druid hall, I got down to business. There was an artifact weapon to be procured, and no time to waste! The Nightmare is encroaching on Val’Sharah, and features prominently in the Feral quest line.

I picked Feral because I have been enjoying it since the pre-patch. Sylv has not been a kitty druid since his creation, back in 2005. He became a resto druid in the Burning Crusade and dual spec’d to bear sometime thereafter, and has not done a stint as feral in a very long time. He was a moonkin once for all of a week but we don’t speak about that. I will go back and get all of the artifacts when I’m able, and Sylv will continue to be a tank/healer, but I thought Feral would best serve me as I level up.

This place is so serene. I plopped my fishing line in the water here for a bit.

The Feral quest line asks you to retrieve the weapons from a deranged druid who stole them to keep them safe. He does such a poor job of it that you have to kick his ass to get them back.

We sneaked our way into a series of caves below ground, which of course were infested with spiders. Why did it have to be spiders?

And finally, we wrested the blades from the idiot who took them, smacked some sense into his furry little head, and wen’t back topside to gloat and continue on our journey.

After we got the artifact, we were sent into Val’Sharah proper to begin questing. Of course I picked the druidy zone to start in!

And this is why.

We spent some time lurking around caves where druids like to hibernate.